The Forgotten Teachings of Luigi Taparelli

From The Public Discourse.com (Feb. 28, 2022):

Social justice is one of the most prominent—and one of the most loaded—political buzzwords of our time. A term championed by the left, it is regularly used as the basis for creating some government intervention or expanding welfare policy. It is no surprise, then, that the phrase has found little popularity among conservatives and classical liberals. Friedrich Hayek captured conservatives’ distaste for it when he claimed that “nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.” Social justice has become a “weasel word” that can justify any sort of policy. After all, who could be against something that’s both social and just?

But social justice hasn’t always been about political sloganeering. The concept’s pedigree can actually be traced to nineteenth-century Christian social thought. The inventor of social justice is a little known figure, Luigi Taparelli. Thomas Behr’s 2019 book, Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought, explores the origin of this idea and the ways that Taparelli developed it into an account of Catholic social engagement.

Taparelli (1793–1862) is a largely forgotten economist in need of an intellectual resurrection. A Jesuit priest from Italy, his role was foundational in the development of Catholic social teaching, if only because Pope Leo XIII was a student assistant of his and was taught by Taparelli.

Social justice is not redistributive justice by government fiat. Nor is it linked to some idea of absolute social or economic equality, as in progressive parlance. Instead, Taparelli develops his notion of social justice from a natural law basis in the tradition of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Further, social justice according to Taparelli must be grounded in the principle of subsidiarity and linked to a theological understanding of economics.

Natural Sociability

Taparelli’s account of social justice starts with the idea that man is not born free, but straight away in “chains,” being dependent throughout his life on the people and institutions around him. He is influenced by the heritage he receives and the circumstances he is born into. Social justice, in its simplest terms, is a moral virtue; it is “a constant and perpetual will to render to each his right,” notes Behr. It is to will and to do what is just for the other simply because the other is participating in the same society as oneself, both on the local level and in the society of mankind.

All people by nature have “physiological sociability,” which is the innate awareness of, dependence on, and cooperation with others. When a person comes of age, starts to reason, and becomes aware of his surroundings, he begins to notice the “reciprocity of social relations”—or what justice looks like in society. Doing good to others slowly develops into an active habit. It becomes second nature to treat others justly and to provide them with the basic necessities to thrive. The early physiological sociality, with which everyone is born, transitions into a “moral sociality,” a habit that makes us work toward the good of the people in our community. Going even beyond this, “solidarity” makes us charitable and lets us go even beyond doing to others what is just. When we act in solidarity, we are sacrificing ourselves for the other.

As individuals engage justly in society, a sense of social justice for an entire community arises. This communal level of justice is “social virtue,” which in the words of Michael Novak is “the living energy of the practice of democracy.” A whole political order is just when it guarantees “the rights to life, liberty, and the rational pursuit of happiness” to all its members and when its laws and institutions respect these rights. [read more]